


been sleeping here instead

by betternovembers



Category: Go On (TV)
Genre: Accidental Relationship, Gen, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 06:19:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betternovembers/pseuds/betternovembers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Here's the part she doesn't expect: he just sort of… stays."</p>
            </blockquote>





	been sleeping here instead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Annakovsky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annakovsky/gifts).



> For this to work, pretend Anne owns a TV and it's in the living room. Written for [Nothing Hip February Challenge](http://nothing-hip.livejournal.com/39584.html). Title from "Ho Hey" by The Lumineers.

Simone goes away, and it takes a couple of weeks, but sure enough King has (by her count) the tenth in his series of emotional breakdowns. Only this one ends up with him putting his house up for sale, putting all of his shit in storage, and showing up on her doorstep with a duffel bag and a stupid little license plate that says Anne.

All of these things are Ryan King levels of ridiculous, but not exactly unexpected. He babbles on about the challenges of buying novelty gifts for people with weird names before she finally settles on just opening the door all the way and letting him come in. She keeps the license plate though. All those assholes with no _e_ in their name ruin everything.

And besides, it's not like the motherfucker can't afford a hotel room for a couple of weeks with his fancy sports talk radio money, but she does take him in ( _fuck_ Yolanda, she has a heart of _gold_ ) and pushes him onto the sofa. Just so he stops standing in her foyer like a sad homeless widower with no place else to go. It's not like she doesn't have a guest room. If she pats him on the head a little once she gets back from tossing his bag and a clean towel on the bed, well, it's only because he looks so pathetic.

 

Here's the part she doesn't expect: he just sort of… stays.

She thought by now Steven or Carrie would have rescued her, but apparently King's got them convinced he has some sort of plan, which, no.

The kids love him, the traitorous bastards, though she hasn't really trusted their judgment all _that_ much since the Mr. K Mary Poppins incident. And this isn't like King dealing with them for a couple of hours on a major holiday and then going home, he's seeing them _all the time_ which for most kids means seeing them in their natural state of self-obsessed assholes, and hers are no exception. She loves them, but still.

King has a knack for slipping into their routines though. He gets Nate and Abby their cereal in the mornings and makes sure the marshmallows are split mostly evenly between the bowls. He makes sure they brush their teeth. He ends up convincing her to assign them _Harry Potter_ for their extra reading (it wasn't like she was _stopping_ them from reading it in their free time) and then King starts all these intense debates at the dinner table about Dumbledore's motives. 

The worst part is he claims he doesn't mind. Only insane people actively like other people's children (see again: Mr. K). But it's King and he's not doing it just to get under her skin; he does legitimately enjoy it. He's terrible at faking that.

(It's only a week and a half in when King mentions he's interviewing Russell Westbrook on his show, and Nate's face looks like he just saw boobs for the first time. She doesn't say anything, mostly because she has no clue who Russell Westbrook _is_ , but after dinner when King's washing the dishes and she's mostly drinking a glass of wine but pretending like she's about to start drying any minute, he asks if it's ok if the kids miss a day of school. When she gets home from work the next day, she finds her son in the most absurd outfit with suspenders and glasses that don't even have lenses and King just shrugs and says, "we went shopping with Russell." Abby's running around downstairs in a jersey six sizes too big for her, and when Anne finally gets a look at it after Abby's down for the night, there's a scribbled signature on the back of it.

She doesn't even have a _chance_ in her own house.)

 

He looks at places for the first couple of months, at houses that need too much work and apartments that are all glass and chrome, and he brings Anne along because he says that he trusts her judgment. King looks out of place in all of them, too small and alone in other people's living rooms, too soft in all these modern douchebag apartments with the pointless minimalist furniture.

He comes up with excuses for all of them, the commute to work sucks, the bathroom is too small or there's not enough room for a pinball machine.

She ignores how normal it's starting to look for him to be in her kitchen with both of her kids hanging of his arms, but she always agrees that whatever place they're looking at this time, it's not for him.

 

It's six months before she tells Lauren, who gives her the wide eyes of doom and puts her hands over Anne's and reminds her that boundaries are important.

It's a little too late for that shit.

 

(She's still not sure how the rest of the group hasn't figured it out yet, especially with their collective fascination with King's life now back in full swing with Simone out of the picture again. She keeps expecting to wake up one day to a shadow group meeting in her bedroom to call her out on it, but it never happens.)

 

King starts doing this thing where he puts his arm on the back of the sofa. Not on her shoulders, but close enough that it feels like it. She doesn't say anything, but it becomes this thing that she's pretty sure he's not even aware of, just muscle memory or heterosexual guy habit. And sometimes it's a little tempting to lean it, because the way King sits on the couch next to her, the cushions shift and she sort of sinks down into him anyway.

She looks over at him and considers, for a minute, that he's not unattractive. It's dangerous territory to start thinking about, because then all she can notice is the laugh lines at his eyes, the way he has the top button of his shirt undone.

She's still sure she's super gay, but she's human and she could do a lot worse than Ryan King, if it came down to it.

(When she leans in for the first time, she makes it up to herself by stealing the remote and watching _Top Chef_ instead of the hockey game King was about to get violent over. Padma Lakshmi can reaffirm anyone's knowledge that they are completely into ladies.)

 

She realizes a lot too late that she actively likes holding hands with King every once in a while, or tucking her arm through his. In related news, she also realizes a lot too late that he knows she likes it, and that he's adapted, or anticipates it, or god forbid, he likes it too.

They're sort of dating, in a way that means they never have sex but they still live together and he lets her have the last beer when both of them forget to stop on the way home from work, and when she's on the sofa in sweatpants with the kids watching the stupidest shit the Disney channel can come up with, he just picks Nate up and settles down next to her with Nate sprawled across his lap and sings the theme song under his breath.

Fuck everything, they're _married_.

 

It's a few minutes after 1:23 and King's standing at the foot of her bed in the dark, and he's lucky she doesn't own a shotgun when he's pulling dumb shit like this. 

When her heart's slowed down enough to actually breathe again, she realizes why he's there and flips down the other corner of the comforter without a word.

"Are you sure?" he asks, and it's a small kindness that she ignores how choked up he sounds. They both have their bad nights, even still.

"You slept with Simone, I always wanted to sleep with Simone, it's close enough."

"This is weird," King says, and pulls the blankets up to his chin. He's not wrong. The whole bed moves when he does, and she can feel how warm he is even though they have a solid foot between them.

"We'll be fine. Just don't get a boner."

"Wow. Well, with romance like that, I'm not sure how I can resist." King shifts around a bit, and finally seems to settle.

"Shut up and go to sleep, Ryan."

He does.

 

The next night he doesn't bother waiting for 1:23 to roll around.

 

She gets out of court early one day after demolishing her closing argument. The jury takes four minutes to come back, which is a new personal best, so she figures she'll celebrating by taking the kids out someplace, their pick. (Risky, but she's in a good mood.)

Nate's first words once he's in the car aren't _hi mom_ or _thanks for getting me out of school early_ but are, "Where's Ryan?" 

It's two o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon. She has no fucking clue where King is, especially considering how much of an enabler Steven is. "Work, I guess. Why?"

She watches Nate shrug in the rearview mirror. "I just thought he'd be with you," he says, and then she loses him to his video game.

She drives to Abby's school on autopilot, wondering just how badly she fucked it up for all of them when she let King stay that first night.

 

She knows she's being weird all night once King gets home, and he high-fives her after Abby tells him she won today and all she can do is stare at him. And she doesn't really talk at dinner at all, and shoos him out of the kitchen and washes the dishes on her own. It's a solid fifteen minutes after she finishes the last plate before she picks her wedding ring off of the windowsill and puts it back on her finger.

(It's the same spot where King usually leaves his.)

She wakes up to an empty bed. She lets herself have a moment where she misses Patty so intensely she folds in on herself, but it's only a minute and she hauls herself up to go find King.

He's downstairs with the TV on but no lights, with his bare feet on the coffee table like she hates and with an open beer that he hasn’t even touched.

"Are you going to leave?" It's not her best opener, but it's three in the morning and she's had a _day_ and sometimes subtlety is overrated.

"What? No—"

"Are you happy?"

"What is happening? Are you Lauren? Is the group hiding in the closet? Where's the gong?" King looks around as if this is actually a possibility, which to be fair, the group has done weirder things that that.

"I have _kids_ , who think you're the coolest person alive for reasons I still don't understand. You're here now but if you're not anymore." She stops before she says, _they already lost their mother_ or _I don't want you to leave them too_ because King knows. (And the truth is, there's another reason why she does't want him to leave and he knows that one too.)

"You're being an idiot, and I know how much you hate idiots, so you should really stop that."

She punches him in the arm, hard enough to bruise, and he just pulls her in and kisses her on the top of her head. _He's_ the idiot.

"Also, your pajamas are ridiculous," he says. "Are you Don Draper?"

They're from J. Crew and silk with the white piping and, "Shut up, King."

"And she's back." He reaches over and puts a pillow up against the arm of the couch and slides over a little so she has enough space to lie down.

She falls asleep to him watching some ESPN documentary and muttering under his breath about how much he hates Bill Simmons, with her legs draped over his lap and his palm on her shin, his fingers warm where they rest on her calf.


End file.
